For the past couple of weeks the beautiful Niligri hills experienced rains like never before. Landslides, uprooted trees and floods affected normalcy in all part of the district. Particularly, second week of November saw nature’s fury in a small village near the Kothagiri Township. I happen to hail from the same village and with lot of concern called up my parents, relatives and friends…I heard that my granny missed the fury by quite literally a whisker.
My village happens to be in a valley… surrounded by mountains and on that particular night…2 am to be precise, one side of the mountain gave way and smashed a couple of houses and water seeped into half the houses in the village. The landslide spared nothing on the way…trees, rocks, tea gardens.
I heard from my friends, that cries of help loud on the air…the whole village panicked…most of them ran around with torches and candles to help each other…and pulled people out of the bog. Apart from the property the land slide took one life and left 15 to 20 injured.
In spite of being warned not to travel to the hill station…I had to…for unavoidable reasons. It took 5 hours more than the usual journey to reach my destination. I saw lot of crowd going up and down the hill eager to get a first hand idea as to what had happened. My friends received me…the rain had picked up momentum as we walked through the slush… walked into a couple of broken houses including my granny’s…we did not bother about the rain beating down hard on us and one of them was narrating the whole incident.
We walked across couple of cranes and earthmovers and reached my friend’s house… washed our legs which were soaked with mud. My friends kept narrating incident after incident as we sipped a cup of tea.
One of the incidents involved a member of our village football team, whose house was badly battered and he was caught in the debris… he was covered up to his neck by mud and could not wriggle out as his legs and hands were tangled in between logs. All that he could do was to shout for help…his neighbours predominantly ladies and men in the late seventies could not do much…but they managed to spot him in the dark and rain ravished night and called out for help.
Brave volunteers
Typical of any youth in our community…couple of my friends had jumped out of their beds and ran in the direction of the cries. That was when they realized the extent of the devastation…they went through the bog which was well above knee height… with few torch lights and candle lights flashing in the distance they reached the spot where our mate was. They quickly started digging the mud with their bare hands and did not use any instruments to avoid injury to their mate as it was pretty dark for them to use any.
It took nearly 3 hours for them to pull him out…during the 3 long hour’s battle between life and death… the neighbours had the presence of mind to get some biscuits and tea to keep him warm and gain some energy.
And just when the last part of his body…the right leg gave way…he cried uncontrollably. He beat himself and cried out that his Mom was just underneath his legs and he could not save her. He kept asking each one of my friends… who is there for me…I lost my Mom my Dad and the house we have. His Dad had expired a few months back and now the land slide has taken away his Mom.
Tears filled all our eyes…as my friend was narrating it. The rains had claimed more than hundred lives and as many injured in the district. I am sure there are many more incidents of this sort in various part of this landscape.
Things and money will sure mend the broken houses…but the need of the hour is prayers that will heal the broken heart.
My village happens to be in a valley… surrounded by mountains and on that particular night…2 am to be precise, one side of the mountain gave way and smashed a couple of houses and water seeped into half the houses in the village. The landslide spared nothing on the way…trees, rocks, tea gardens.
I heard from my friends, that cries of help loud on the air…the whole village panicked…most of them ran around with torches and candles to help each other…and pulled people out of the bog. Apart from the property the land slide took one life and left 15 to 20 injured.
In spite of being warned not to travel to the hill station…I had to…for unavoidable reasons. It took 5 hours more than the usual journey to reach my destination. I saw lot of crowd going up and down the hill eager to get a first hand idea as to what had happened. My friends received me…the rain had picked up momentum as we walked through the slush… walked into a couple of broken houses including my granny’s…we did not bother about the rain beating down hard on us and one of them was narrating the whole incident.
We walked across couple of cranes and earthmovers and reached my friend’s house… washed our legs which were soaked with mud. My friends kept narrating incident after incident as we sipped a cup of tea.
One of the incidents involved a member of our village football team, whose house was badly battered and he was caught in the debris… he was covered up to his neck by mud and could not wriggle out as his legs and hands were tangled in between logs. All that he could do was to shout for help…his neighbours predominantly ladies and men in the late seventies could not do much…but they managed to spot him in the dark and rain ravished night and called out for help.
Brave volunteers
Typical of any youth in our community…couple of my friends had jumped out of their beds and ran in the direction of the cries. That was when they realized the extent of the devastation…they went through the bog which was well above knee height… with few torch lights and candle lights flashing in the distance they reached the spot where our mate was. They quickly started digging the mud with their bare hands and did not use any instruments to avoid injury to their mate as it was pretty dark for them to use any.
It took nearly 3 hours for them to pull him out…during the 3 long hour’s battle between life and death… the neighbours had the presence of mind to get some biscuits and tea to keep him warm and gain some energy.
And just when the last part of his body…the right leg gave way…he cried uncontrollably. He beat himself and cried out that his Mom was just underneath his legs and he could not save her. He kept asking each one of my friends… who is there for me…I lost my Mom my Dad and the house we have. His Dad had expired a few months back and now the land slide has taken away his Mom.
Tears filled all our eyes…as my friend was narrating it. The rains had claimed more than hundred lives and as many injured in the district. I am sure there are many more incidents of this sort in various part of this landscape.
Things and money will sure mend the broken houses…but the need of the hour is prayers that will heal the broken heart.
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